Sunday, July 27, 2008

You get what you pay for

Here's the headline that greeted me this morning:

About a year ago the 35W bridge collapsed. This came after record low spending on transportation infrastructure. This headline juxtaposes memorial for last year's disaster on the 'W' branch of Interstate 35 as it passes through our fair metropolis with chunks of the 'E' branch falling on passing cars.

Why is Minneapolis consistently in the top five US cities for bicycle commuting even though we have long, harsh winters? It's because we have the infrastructure that makes it possible. How different would our addiction to oil be if our infrastructure were in place across our nation? Maybe we wouldn't feel the need to sacrifice so many of our young patriots to keep the flow of oil coming.

2 comments:

For some great ideas on alternative check out http://www.rmi.org It's a non political research center.We could get by using less than 10% of the oil we use now simply by building efficient machines. It's worth checking out.